Dash for cash

Herald StaffSunday, April 07, 2013

Assuming the Red Sox and Jacoby Ellsbury fail to reach a contract extension this season, Ellsbury will hit free agency as perhaps the marquee name available. The other two-thirds of the market’s Big Three potentially available for 2014 — Dodgers lefty Clayton Kershaw and Yankees second baseman Robinson Cano — seem likely to sign extensions. Ellsbury is zigging when his contemporaries have zagged, and someone is likely going to make him very rich as a result.

Consider the following two lists: Ellsbury’s fellow members of the 2008 rookie class who already have been extended; and players further from free agency who have signed extensions this year: